the protagonist Lewis Barnavelt of House With a Clock was the first time i'd read about a hero who was unheroic, who lied to avoid embarrassment, who rather despised himself. a memory of a memory! i was never a bullied or angst-ridden child, so that memory pops out as almost uniquely painful. I recently re-read House with a Clock in Its Walls and was taken aback by the memory of reading it for the first time at age 10 or so - and the memory i had had back then of my moment of mortification and sudden femininity. it is interesting to think about the complicated emotions that my youthful self had to wrestle with. I laugh at the story now but i also can't help but remember the sharp flash of humiliation, the quick decision that it was less embarrassing to be a girl mistaken for a boy than to admit that i could have been a boy who looked like a girl, and then of course the ample self-loathing that followed. i died a little bit, then squeaked out: 'I'm a little girl'. a young man came down to use the vending machines there, looked at me, and asked conversationally, 'Are you a little boy or a little girl?'. One day when i was about 8 or 9, living in some chilly state, i bundled myself up until i looked like a little gray egg, hood over head, the hood's furry fringe making my face a cameo portrait of a round genderless blob, and proceded to wait for my ride in the lobby of my apartment building.

The house with a clock in its walls